The gift of the gaffe

Shinzo Abe, in his first nine months in the job as prime minister of Japan, has given Gordon Brown an object lesson in what not to do. In that time, two ministers have resigned and one has committed suicide. His defence minister, Fumio Kyuma, said he understood why the United States dropped the bomb on Japan. Mr Kyuma is an MP from Nagasaki. Last week his foreign minister, Taro Aso, said that even Alzheimer's sufferers could understand the reason for selling more Japanese rice to China. Japan has a large ageing population, and Mr Aso's language caused shock and offence in equal measure.

Little surprise, then, that Japan's ruling party, the Liberal Democratic party (LDP), is expecting a thrashing in elections to the upper house of parliament this weekend. The ratings of Mr Abe and his gaffe-prone government are in free fall. The only questions are how bad the result will be and whether Mr Abe will survive. The prime minister still benefits from a large majority in the lower house of parliament and he vowed yesterday not to regard Sunday's election as a referendum on his performance. The LDP wants to avoid a damaging leadership contest, and Mr Abe's hold on the top job is strengthened by the lack of available challengers. His predecessor, the charismatic Junichiro Koizumi, has disappeared from public view and given no indication that he wants to return. And the only other name mentioned - until the Nagasaki blunder - was that of Mr Aso. Yet Mr Abe was chosen as an election winner, and if he loses this one badly it will affect the ability of his government to pass major reform through parliament.

Mr Abe started well internationally, by making his first foreign trips to China and South Korea instead of Japan's traditional ally, America. This went down well regionally, as has Mr Abe's failure, thus far, to worship at the Yasukuni war shrine, which numbers 14 class-A war criminals among the spirits it honours. But Mr Abe has appeared less sensitive to domestic concerns. He has talked grandiloquently about Japan being "a beautiful country", but no one who is worried about their jobs, or their pensions, quite knows what that means. Seemingly oblivious of the anxieties of the man in the street, Mr Abe has stuck to the high ground of politics, promoting patriotism in schools and proposing revisions to the country's pacifist constitution.

This has alienated voters, who were more comfortable with Mr Koizumi's straight talking. They want answers to practical questions such as how much their pension will be worth when they retire. Mr Abe may yet have the ability to change course, but he will need to do so soon.